Seen it? Send it!

Another cool new concept from the BBC TWO website - Seen it? Send it! basically takes the idea of ’send this link to a friend’ to the next level in a way that works well with video.

You can either choose to send the whole clip where you get a form to fill in and it works in much the same way as any other e-mail link or, and this is the ‘cool’ bit - you can select part of what you’re watching to send.

This is a lot more exciting than it sounds - say your watching Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson makes reference to a car your mate has just brought - instead of sending him an e-mail saying “watch Top Gear online and skip to about 14 minutes in” you just click ’start’ at the begining of the clip you want and, this is really clever stuff here ‘end’ at the end of the clip you want.

Select Send and your friend has the bit about Jeremy Clarkson ripping into his brand spanking new pile of dog turd - wonderful stuff from BBC TWO.

Unfortunatly it does have a couple of downsides at the moment:

1) It only works in IE (does work in IE7 so you should get it if you haven’t already)
2) Requires Pop-Ups to be ‘allowed’ for bbc.co.uk

The Pop-Up issue is a big problem as well because there isn’t a link on the page it sends you to that says something like ‘Watch the Clip Now’ - instead it relies on a bit of user savy in that it expects you to know how to click the little yellow bar to say ‘yes I want to allow popups’ and trust me - I know a lot of people that don’t get that yellow bar thingy.

That aside this is a brilliant concept and when fully rolled out to the ever growing library of video content on bbc.co.uk/bbctwo it will make a great addition.

I’m really excited by the way BBC TWO has embraced the web and the way they’re putting content online - instead of taking the stream alongside broadcast approach that some US networks take, or the straight put the show up for a week that others take - they’ve given a mix of full shows (rights permitting) and clips - often both - so you can pick and choose your content depending on your time and need.

The way BBC TWO has done it allows for both main types of web video user - the one that wants to watch everything online and on demand (me) and the type that just wants something extra online but would still prefer to watch it linear on their TV.

My guess is that as BBC TWO gets ready to start broadcasting their linear signal online and the BBC iPlayer launches we will start to see more or less a page for EVERY show on BBC TWO with links to iPlayer downloads or streaming windows to watch them there and then AND message board discussions, blogs that refer to the show and shorted clips/previews.

The one thing the BBC iMP lacked more than any other was a decent preview system - a way to see what a show was like before committing to a download - it might get messy having this integrated into iPlayer but it is something the linear channel sites could handle easily.

Then as we see linear programming dissapear the content type category (comedy, drama, light entertainment, music) could carry the trailer on its index.

Sphere: Related Content